Privilege of Life
by fowl68
Summary: She told the three of them "Don't die." The horrible, terrible irony of it was that they kept their promise.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything!

**Author's Note: **Just a little piece I thought up after a conversation with some friends the other day. It led me down some different roads for characters that were starting to get very familiar, so I appreciated it.

* * *

_When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privelege it is to be alive-to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."  
-Marcus Aurelius_

* * *

After more than four thousand years, Yuan still has only one favorite birthday. You'd think he would have more, but there's a long time in the middle of all those years that's like an out-of-focus photograph, so blurry that it's hardly recognizable.

His birthday isn't his actual day of birth. Or, he doesn't think it is. War plays hell on records and literacy and he remembers vague memories of celebrating it in the heat of summer with his mother and brother, when the pomegranate trees were heavy with fruit. The day that he celebrates is the day that he and Kratos chose, during a lazy summer day by the river because Kratos had realized that he never learned his best friend's birthday.

That day, by default, is high on his list of favorite birthdays. But it's not at the top.

His favorite birthday is his twenty-fourth. It begins with his walking back to his and Kratos' shared room after his turn at the shower—which, in those days, is little more than a water pump that creaks with each use—and the three of them are waiting patiently in the room. Kratos, Mithos and Martel, dressed for the day and there's a matching gleam in their eyes that spells trouble.

"Good morning," Martel greets and she and her brother have this identical smile that looks entirely too innocent.

"Morning," Yuan replies warily, glancing at Kratos, who, as the most level-headed of the group, should be more reassuring than he's currently being. "What's…going on?"

"Do you have any plans today?" Kratos asks casually and he _knows _the answer to that one.

Yuan narrows his eyes at him, still only wearing the scratchy towel around his waist because he hadn't felt like finding trousers earlier. "Not in particular."

It's a lie, one that Kratos knows the truth to because they're supposed to be reporting to the Generals in a few hours to discuss defensive measures for the city, but the three of them are acting strange and Yuan hates meeting with the Generals anyway. He doesn't have that kind of attention span.

They grin at him. "Fantastic!"

Martel and Mithos are on their feet the next instant. Martel brushes a kiss against his lips, quick and light, just a hello, and says, "Get some clothes on," before leaving the room, her brother on her heels.

Rather bewildered at the entire exchange, Yuan stares after her until he realizes he's getting a crick in his neck. Whirling back around to Kratos, he asks, "What did—"

The boy Yuan had grown up with is now a man hardened by war, confident and more self-assured, but when Kratos smiles at him like that, Yuan can still see that boy in him. "Don't tell me you forgot."

It takes him a minute.

"Oh."

That makes Kratos laugh. "Yeah. Oh. Hurry up and get dressed. They're waiting."

It's nothing special, what the three of them had planned. They steal away from the city, out past the rolling hills until they get to the mouth of the river. They spend the day there, swimming and lazing about. Martel had the good foresight to bring snacks in her bag.

There is a point, in the latter half of the day when Mithos and Kratos are off exploring some of the caves behind the waterfall, that Martel, still dripping wet in her underthings from her latest dunk in the river, sits herself on Yuan's lap where he's been laying in the sun, slowly drying off. His hands find her hips automatically, thumbs massaging small circles into them.

"I was almost dry," he tells her.

Martel tosses her head to get loose locks of hair out of her face and the smile she gives him tugs at something low in his belly. "Funny. I don't hear you complaining."

"Well, when I have such a creature of beauty in such a position," One of his hands strokes idly up and down one of her bare thighs. "How could I?"

Her laughter rings out, silvery and warm. She leans down to kiss him. He doesn't let her go until she's breathless. "Aren't you the charmer?"

"Charmed you, didn't I?"

The next thing Yuan remembers hearing is something about an image being seared into Mithos' brain and Kratos dying of laughter. Martel hides her face in Yuan's chest, blushing from her cheeks to the tips of her triangular ears and Yuan can't help but laugh too, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hair.

It's a simple birthday, a peaceful one and the people who can't understand that have never had Martel Yggdrasill curled up against them, mouth pink and kiss-swollen. They haven't spread out beneath the stars and had Kratos Aurion's voice sharing stories—even the embarrassing ones from their childhood that Yuan has to wrestle him into silence for. They've never seen Mithos Yggdrasill—still barely a teenager and _so _easy to tease—rolling his eyes at the easy displays of affection between his sister and Yuan.

He has a family. A proper one, even if they are a little strange and certainly misfits. Well, the four of them are all misfits, but together, they work quite well.

* * *

It's hard for Martel to think of her favorite birthday. Her first thought when she tries to decide is her _least _favorite, which is her twenty-second.

The war is a distant concept then, in terms of the dead. The war hasn't taken people she loves yet, only strangers. Her mother had died of illness and her father followed her into death from heartbreak.

The day she turns twenty-two, there is a battle raging. They are trying to sack a human city and the magitechnology built into the humans' homes is already making her and Mithos' stomachs turn_ (They were the most sensitive of the half-elves when it came to mana. And magitechnology made mana turn poisonous colors and twisted its essence_) That day is the first day that a friend dies.

His name is Scott. He's a Healer-in-training at her clinic and one of the first friends she makes in the capitol. He's a sweetheart who loves to flirt—but, he confesses to her one night, he doesn't actually have any romantic interest in women—and he can seem pretty mild-mannered up until his patients start arguing and that's when his steel shows up, glinting in his eyes and setting his jaw.

She finds him. Or rather, she trips on him, scrambling to her feet after a bomb falls, ears ringing. She can't even make herself scream because it's locked away in her throat at the sight of what's left of him. Organs and bones exposed to the air and the stench of _meat_ and she's seen terrible things without flinching, but recognizing his handsome face in that _mess_ makes her vomit.

Yuan finds her sobbing, trying to put pieces of Scott back together and he holds her tight. "He's gone, Martel. There's nothing you can do."

Her fists hit his chest and her tears are soaking his shirt and Yuan just keeps holding her, a rock, an anchor, a candle in the dark.

They burn his body. His and the others that they find that day. There's no space left in graveyards, no people to spare to take the bodies home. So they burn them. In one big pile. Ash and smoke fill the air and Martel's barely holding herself together, grief pushing the pieces of herself apart.

She sees a familiar face among the mourners. Rhyus, Scott's lover. She had met him in the clinic sometimes, bringing Scott some food or picking Scott up after a shift. He has a floppy mop of red hair and broad shoulders and strong hands from his carpentry before he'd joined the army. Martel offers him a hug and he has to bend to wrap his arms around her properly. She feels his tears seeping into her neck and she just hangs on to his shirt. Her tears are gone, at this point. She just feels hollow and so, so tired.

Martel's twenty-second birthday passes without anyone's acknowledgment. She prefers it that way. It feels like the smoke from the pyre is still trapped in her chest, dusting her throat and lungs. She snaps more easily, these days, at patients, at their families.

She clears a room, once, with her newfound viciousness. She doesn't realize it until minutes afterward, when she's breathing hard and the pyre-smoke that isn't really there is choking her.

Kratos is still there, with his eyes—red-tinted brown like blood-soaked dirt—full of sorrow and sympathy. She doesn't realize that she'd spoken until Kratos answers. "The person you are right now—it isn't the best person to be around."

Her mind filters her question back to her. _Where is everyone?_

But the words come before she ever has time to think about them. "This coming from you? Your mother left a whole life behind trying to get away from you."

_(If Martel lived until the end of time, she wouldn't be able to forget the look on Kratos' face. Shock, betrayal and raw hurt, like the little child he'd been, the one she'd never met, only heard stories of. The little child left in a huge house with only his terrifying father and slaves for company…)_

Martel watches him carefully set the little bowl of food on a table—she can smell it from here; some roasted meat and fried potato mash and the sweet smell of honey drizzle, her favorite—before turning and stepping out. There are no doors slammed, no feet stomping. Kratos doesn't react like that when he's hurt. He retreats, he goes quiet and she _hates _that she's done it to him.

Because Martel knows that she's doing it. She knows that Yuan's flinched from her temper recently and Mithos has chewed his lip raw because he wants to say something to her, but he doesn't know what'll set her off. Martel can't control herself; the words come unbidden, from some dark place that grief has made because Scott shouldn't have been out there. None of them should be. They shouldn't be on battlefields; they should be getting married, exploring without fear, bouncing babies on their knees.

And she has seen how hollow-eyed Rhyus is now. They wouldn't have been able to be married, never officially, but there had been a promise of a life together. And instead, Scott died on a battlefield far from home for _what?_

Martel wants to rage against the _injustice_ of it all, wants to rip away Yuan and Mithos and Kratos' faces until she can't recognize them anymore because then she can't care about them. If Scott—a man who she'd been friends with, yes, but not terribly close to—can affect her like _this_, what will happen when it's Kratos' body on the pyre, when it's Yuan who doesn't come home, when it's Mithos they find out on the battlefield? What would she do then?

She doesn't have the strength to even try and imagine it. It's like trying to take in all of the sky at once; her mind can't process it.

Martel falls apart again three months after Scott's death. She curls a hand in Yuan's shirt, knuckles digging into his collarbone until they bruise and kissing him hard, more like an attack then a kiss. "Don't you _dare_ die," she tells him, close enough that their lips brush together as she talks. "Not ever."

And he promises her right there that he won't because he never wants to see her break again.

Martel makes Kratos and Mithos promise the same, apologizing to Kratos so much and hugging him tightly enough that his ribs creak. He forgives her easily because that's who Kratos is, too kind for his own good. Mithos, she presses a kiss to his forehead, and cups his freckled cheeks because this is her brother, her son in all but blood, her stars in the sky and he's too young to be involved in all this.

_(The horrible, terrible irony of it was that they kept their promise. They watched kingdoms, entire dynasties, rise and fall, their great cities crumbling and they contemplated death more than once, but they could never do it because one day in June, they promised her they wouldn't)_

Perhaps it's the memory of all this that makes Martel's twenty-third birthday so great. The war has not ended. It's getting to the point where most think it never will. March brings with it constant rain from the melting mountain snows.

They are trapped inside, on such a day. The rain is a powerful one, pounding on the roofs and flooding the gutters. Martel is sitting with one leg tucked under her, leaning on the doorframe and Yuan claims the other when he comes to sit with her. He runs his hands absentmindedly up and down her calf and it's nice to just sit in comfortable silence. They'd been on a battlefield, not two weeks ago and the new nightmares aren't gone yet.

Kratos comes to sit, bringing tea with him. He passes Martel hers—bitter, no sugar. She is still an elf-child, after all this and tea should taste as nature intended in her book—and then Yuan his—which has copious amounts of sugar and milk both—before folding himself inside the doorframe, knees against Martel's spine and shoulder-to-shoulder with Yuan.

They sip in comfortable silence and Martel nearly dozes off—she hasn't had much sleep lately, what with nightmares and long shifts—when Mithos dashes up the front stairs.

Martel snaps awake then because she'd thought that he'd been napping, as he tended to do on rainy days. But he's grinning at her through dripping bangs, a ray of sun amidst all the grey and his hands are behind his back.

He swings around a paper bag, carefully protected from the rain by a barrier spell, and pulls from it a rather large pastry, with orange filling oozing from its orifices and honey drizzled over the top of it.

Mithos holds it out to her. "A gift for the birthday girl."

"I—" Where had he gone, to get something this size? It must have been expensive, costing him every little piece of gald he'd squirreled away for the last year. "Mithos…"

His grin dims down to a smile, fond and sweet. "You deserve it, Martel. And it's your birthday! Everyone needs something sweet on their birthday."

Martel laughs and beckons him closer, taking the pastry and kissing his cheek in thanks. Her clothes are wet now, thanks to him—Kids' priorities, honestly. He can make a barrier spell for the food, but not himself? Mithos sees the way that Yuan's eying the paper bag and he tells him "Yes, I got some for us too."

He had gotten little powdered guava and cheese pastries for the three of them and Martel feels Kratos shift behind her to eat more comfortably. When she looks back, he has a streak of powder on his cheek and she can't help but giggle at the sight. She offers them all a bite of hers—apricot filling with sesame seeds on top—and in lieu of a bite, Yuan leans in and catches crumbs from the side of her mouth, tongue darting in for a taste.

Mithos makes a noise of disgust—he's eleven, what do you expect?—and Martel just curls into all three of her boys after the pastries are gone and they really don't fit in this tiny space and how has Kratos not gotten a leg cramp yet, but they're _safe_, they're _here _and absolutely _alive._

* * *

Four thousand and fifteen. That's Mithos' favorite.

He is traveling with Lloyd and his group then. _(He'd forgotten what it was like, to travel with people. To have them bickering and talking, their noises and teasing. His shadow was his constant companion and that was mostly the extent of it because Kratos and Yuan were very strange company these days)_

It's something that he mentions off hand. Lloyd is telling a story of dwarven cooking and how Dirk can make awesome food, but he sucks at baking because he'd tried for multiple of Lloyd's birthdays to make him a cake, but they really don't get much better.

Mithos doesn't even think about it. He just says, "My birthday's tomorrow." And he's not even lying. It really is. Granted, he hasn't celebrated it in four thousand years, but the point still stands.

Genis looks over at him. "Seriously? And you're just mentioning it now? We have to celebrate!"

And they do celebrate. When they stop in Asgard, he and Genis head off on their own once they all decide on a time to meet up the next day and get an almond sweetcake. They split it and spend the day exploring the city.

_(Did it count as exploring if Mithos already knew the alleys of this town? He'd watched it linger through time, hardy and stubborn—it wasn't a shock that Yuan came from this place—and watched dynasties grow up around it)_

It's fun, though, having a friend. A friend his own age, even—four thousand years of stasis notwithstanding—because he's never really had one of those. Mithos has always been too smart for his own good and it never did him any favors with kids his age.

Being with Genis is easy. It's easy to forget things, with him, easy to want to be who Mithos says he is—just an orphan who got lucky enough to be picked up by these people after his home was destroyed. It's easier to forget the war; the nightmares come less, traveling with everyone. They're not as intense.

_(Lloyd and Colette were the sharp reminders in the group. And Raine. Lloyd because he was very much Kratos' son, in mannerisms and looks, if not in the way he spoke. Colette could have been his sister, honestly. If one went by looks alone, the two of them could have been related and he hated that because Martel always had their father's looks. And Raine. Raine was his sister, in spirit. In so many ways, she was Martel, with her Healing and her proficiency, with her heart. But Martel had been tougher, had dug in her heels where Raine would shove forward. Martel was a wall where Raine would be a cannon)_

So, for one day, he manages to forget the worst of the four thousand years. Manages to get into mischief with a friend and they lick the syrup from their fingers when the almond sweetcake is done. And it's pretty incredible.

* * *

Kratos has two favorite birthdays. This makes sense to him because he thinks of his life divided into three parts: Before Martel's Death, After Martel's Death and After Anna.

Before Martel's Death are good times. Terrible times too, with ash and smoke, bombs and slave brands, but good times too. His favorite birthday of those times is his nineteenth.

They're still on the road then; the capitol is a long way off and there's still hunger gnawing at their bellies, but not as much as it used to. His birthday is in early autumn, almost skimming summer, and he doesn't expect to be woken up to Yuan shoving at him to _wake up_, you log, we have to go.

Kratos is on his feet and moving before his mind is actually properly awake because instinct will get you pretty far as a runaway. Martel is scooping up her and Mithos' bedrolls as she runs and Mithos is too awake for this time of morning, particularly for a seven year old.

It takes a minute for the sounds of shouting behind them to register and he looks over at Yuan. "What did you do?" he shouts and Yuan just flashes him a grin and winks, not letting go of a little white box in his arms.

They run until they're deep into the forest, well past where the villagers will go, and breathing hard. "What was that?" Martel asks Yuan irritably because they'd had a fairly peaceful stay for once.

Yuan just grins and opens the little box. There's a mess of frosting and red filling inside and Yuan's face falls. "Well…it was _supposed _to be Kratos' birthday cake. I saw it in the window."

"So you decided to steal it?" Martel looks over at Kratos, stopping herself mid-argument. "It's your birthday?" They haven't been traveling together long, only a few months at this point and they're still getting used to each other.

"Um, yeah. I—"

"He forgot," Yuan overrides him. "And anyway, this is still edible. C'mon. I grabbed some forks while I was at it."

They sit on the forest floor and share the ruins of a strawberry cake—and Kratos loves strawberries, they're his favorite fruit—and Kratos lets Mithos have the last few bites because the kid is still pretty skinny and while he and Yuan might not have all the details of what Mithos and Martel have been through, it's a safe bet that there hasn't been a whole lot of cake involved.

They don't travel more that day, napping in the shade of the trees. Martel curls up at the base of a tree, a stub of charcoal in one hand, balancing a notebook on her knees. That night, after he and Yuan go hunting and manage to grab a couple of hares and a quail, Martel gives Kratos a sheet of paper.

There's a sketch on it. Of the four of them. It's a simple portrait, not very well-shaded, but the lines are as clean as they can get with charcoal and Kratos grins to himself when he sees it.

"I didn't know you could draw."

Martel does an embarrassed little shuffle-step, not quite meeting his eyes. "I haven't, in a while. But I figured—it's your birthday, so you should get a gift."

He will only ever see Martel look more surprised than this day, when he slams into her with a thank you hug and that's on the day that Yuan will get down on one knee, with the little ring in hand. "I love it," he tells her, beaming because for the first time, he has friends. Plural.

_(Kratos kept that sketch all his life. He had it for four thousand years in his room in Derris-Kharlan. After he met Anna, he stole back up there to take the sketch and a few other personal items to bring with him to the little cottage they found abandoned. That cottage burned when Kvar found it.)_

His second favorite birthday—only in terms of telling it, not in order of importance—is his four thousand and twenty-fifth. He wakes up to an extra heartbeat in the room—not his, or Anna's or Noishe's—and it takes him a minute to figure it out.

That day, he wakes Anna up with light kisses and fingertips trailing up and down her still-flat stomach. She wouldn't show for months yet. She arches away from him, giggling a little because she's _ticklish_, Kratos.

And Kratos smiles against her stomach because she doesn't know yet. And when she looks down at him, hair still growing back out from the stubble it had been at the ranch, a fond smile on her lips, she asks, "What's that look for?"

And he tells her what he woke up to, what he can hear growing inside her and at first, she looks a mixture of excited and scared and Kratos can understand that. Their life isn't a safe one and she's been a prisoner for most of her life; what does she know about being a mother?

So he crawls back up so that they're face to face. "Is this okay?" His hand is still stroking her stomach so there can be no mistake about what he's asking.

Anna hesitates and he appreciates that, that he's getting an honest answer instead of an impulsive one. But she looks at him, long and hard and then she smiles and leans up the little bit it takes to kiss him. "Yes. Better than okay."

_(Those years were some of his best, he thought. Even with the terror of Kvar on their heels, of Cruxis, he was happy. With Anna warm beside him and Lloyd with them. They were his family, in very different days than Yuan, Martel and Mithos were, but his nonetheless)_


End file.
